Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts in 1809 on January 19. Even as a child Poe's life was full of death and pain as both his parents died when he was only three years old and the subsequent losses he would have to face, Poe was born into a family as the second child of three with a string of traveling actors such as parents and had two other siblings William Poe, his older brother, and Rosalie Poe, his younger sister, who after the death of their parents were divided into different families. Poe himself moved to Richmond, Virginia with John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan, where he grew up forced into the life of Virginia gentlemen and involved in business. Business was never intriguing to Poe, in fact, there were some (the early poetic lines found written in a young Poe's handwriting on the back of Allan's ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business ). Poe's Life Poe himself wanted to be a poet like Lord Byron, who had been a hero to him as a child. In this way Poe could have been successful even at an early age, by the age of thirteen Poe had written so many poems that he could have made a book out of them, but was rejected by Allan after Poe's headmaster advised him against it. (In 1826 Poe left his home in Richmond and went to the University of Virginia where he excelled in his studies but ran into the problem of not having even a third of what he needed to attend school for the year. Afterwards he realized that he would not having enough money Poe began gambling for money to pay for his needs and by the end of the first trimester he was burning his furniture just to keep warm.) Returning home to Richmond Poe visited his fiancée just to be heard. ... in the middle of the paper ... I opened the lantern carefully - oh, so carefully - carefully (for the hinges creaked) - I opened it so much that a single thin ray fell on the eye of the 'vulture. And I did so for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found my eye always closed; and therefore it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who tormented me, but his evil eye.") "The Raven" was published in 1845 by the "New York Evening Mirror". In this dark and morbid poem Poe reflects his tumultuous and difficult life. Showing his pain and its sadness. (Once upon a sad midnight, while I reflected weakly and weary, on many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, As I nodded, almost dozing, suddenly there was a tap, as of someone knocking softly «It's some visitor», I murmured, «knocking on my room door»..